It used to be called FT.com, when being a dotcom was fashionable. Following this month's redesign, however, the site has been renamed Financial Times, and given a masthead much like the newspaper. The site is also turning pink, to emphasise the resemblance.

The new front page comes as a shock. I gave up FT.com many years ago, following a horrible redesign. It had become incredibly cluttered, with lots of useless bits of furniture that slowed the download. The type was too small to read, and the Text Size|Larger command in Internet Explorer didn't make it bigger.

Now, of course, it has gone too far the other way. The new front page is mainly noticeable for its wide open spaces. The clutter has gone, but so has most of the content. It's now a fast download, and Text Size|Larger works in IE, though you probably don't need it.

The navigation has also changed. FT.com used to have a useful menu down the left hand side of the page. The new front has a horizontal navbar to link to sections such as Companies, Markets, Lex and Comment. Each link triggers a drop-down menu, so you can click Companies then select, say, Telecoms. Follow these links, however, and you're back in FT.com country. Obviously, no newspaper changes its whole site overnight, but it should go beyond the front page.

The site still isn't keen on casual visitors. It lets you start browsing, then nags you to register. "You have viewed your 30 days allowance of four free articles," it says. At least it's not trying to charge for individual articles.

Free registration lets you read 20 articles every 30 days, which is probably enough for casual visitors. However, "unlimited" use costs £98.99, and if you want to read the popular Lex column, you have to pay £199 for a premium subscription.

There was a time when I would have paid. The FT used to offer access to the World Reporter database, which it renamed FT Profile. This was a wonderful database of British and other newspapers going back decades. It vanished around the end of 2001, and now the online archive only covers five years of the Financial Times.

The site does, however, have some saving graces for less committed readers. It has a Weekend section for its entertaining magazines, including How To Spend It, for the very rich. It also has a dozen freely accessible blogs, which are presented using the new design. There are tech, Westminster, and Brussels blogs, a management blog, an economists' forum, and a few under individual names.

There's also Dear Lucy, where "agony aunt" Lucy Kellaway tackles pressing problems such as "Should I be ashamed for being an investment banker?" and "I'm bored at work, I'm tempted to take three-hour lunches and learn the salsa". Quite.

Given the threatened collapse of our financial infrastructure, the FT has a rare opportunity to pull in a lot of new readers. It may not be making the best of it.